Restoration: The Latest Architecture and News

The Preservation Green Lab at the National Trust for Historic Preservation has recently published their study The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse. Resolving many conflicted arguments, this study confirms that reusing and retrofitting existing buildings with an average level of energy performance almost always offers environmental savings over demolition and more energy-efficient new construction. The research provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the potential environmental impact reductions associated with building reuse. The Preservation Green Lab utilizes Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology to compare reuse and renovations with new construction over the course of a 75-year life span. Continue reading for more.

It’s our eight selection of previously featured refurbishment projects and we’re still featuring some of the best ones we published back in 2009! Check them all after the break.

Khan house / drdh architects drdh architects sent us this house with a long previous story. Speculatively built by 19th Century developers, it has been adapted and distorted over time to suit circumstance – acquiring a single storey shop and basement, an extra storey, a cantilevered lavatory and a garage. Of more immediate concern was the basement, where the floor had been dug out and the corbels sheared off the party walls, to provide extra space (read more…)